Figure 2.

Single-cell omic technologies support the CSC concept. (A) Single-cell genomic analyses showed that after an initial common oncogenic event, the majority of mutations driving tumor growth occur during early tumor expansion and are responsible for the clonal diversity and intra-tumor heterogeneity. This model supports the existence of the CSCs as a subpopulation of self-renewing cells with a common ancestor that sustained a first oncogenic mutation and gave rise to diverse clones within a single tumor. (B) Single-cell triple omics sequencing technique (scTrio-seq) that can assess SCNAs, DNA methylation, and transcriptome information simultaneously from an individual cell enables reconstruction of cancer genetic lineages and their epigenomic and transcriptomic dynamics, thus providing a powerful tool to investigate the contribution of CSCs to CRC progression and therapeutic resistance.